![]() “What develops as you get into the late 11th, 12th century is a sense that knights have to have a professional code if they’re going to be respected and respectable.” “In the early Middle Ages, church councils were praying to be delivered from knights,” Wollock says. ![]() These warriors were commanded by warlords and rewarded with land, or with license to plunder the villages where they did battle, looting, raping and burning as they went. READ MORE: Weapons of the Middle Ages Knights Were Heavily Armed and Prone to Violence “He’s a hired thug,” says Jennifer Goodman Wollock, a professor of medieval studies at Texas A&M University who has written two books about chivalry. In the middle of the 11th century, the knight was not a particularly honorable figure. ![]() The word chivalry itself comes from the Medieval Latin caballarius, meaning horseman. The development of chivalry went hand-in-hand with the rise of knights-heavily armored, mounted warriors from elite backgrounds-starting around the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. ![]() While these rules sometimes dictated generous treatment of the less-fortunate and less-powerful, they were focused mainly on protecting the interests of elites. But during the Middle Ages, the code was established for much grittier reasons.Īt a time of routine military violence with massive civilian casualties, chivalry was an effort to set ground rules for knightly behavior. In the 21st century, the word chivalry evokes a kind of old-fashioned male respect for women. ![]()
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